


We still have time

by Kylpyvene



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Jonah Magnus is gone, Just a brainworm, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Not Canon Compliant, Obsessive Behavior, Peter gets Elias back, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28877346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylpyvene/pseuds/Kylpyvene
Summary: Peter gets a call from the hospital and his husband back.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

Peter wasn’t too fond of autumns. Sure, he had loved them years ago, when he still had his Elias. But the other Elias wasn’t... he Knew autumns had been special to Peter and Elias and never let that go, as he would use it to torment Peter. Peter had tried to leave him, but the tiny sliver of hope of getting his Elias back always drew him back to the bloody bastard wearing his lover’s face. 

Of course, things change. 

It had been mid-October, as he got the call. It was from some special hospital, informing him his husband, they were married again, had been grievously injured. He had wanted to ignore it. He didn’t want to see his Elias’s body broken and hurt. He never could stop seeing him as his Elias, even when the other Elias, Jonah, was not him. But he had arrived at the hospital either way. It was two days after the phone call. In fact, Peter didn’t even know, if Elias would still be in the hospital. Healing powers they had were no joke and whatever had managed to be bad enough to hospitalize Elias had probably already healed. 

Peter was in for a surprise. 

He was shocked Elias was still there. The kind nurse lead him to his room. He stared at Elias before entering after the nurse. He hadn’t seem him like this, looking almost fragile, wounded. Elias was staring at his hands, as the nurse spoke announcing Peter’s arrival, nodded at him and left, closing the door behind him. 

“Peter?” Peter almost flinched. The voice did not sound like the Elias he was used to. The confidence, the smugness, the irritating calmness was all gone. Elias' voice was shaking and almost desperate. Peter just nodded. 

“Can you... come closer? I can’t really... see that well”, Elias mumbled sounding almost apologetic. That sent chills down Peter’s spine. This was very unusual for Elias. He moved closer, sat next to Elias’s bed. Peter avoided his eyes as he sat down and looked at the very injured man next to him. Elias was quiet for a while, then reached his hand towards Peter, who caught it before it touched him. He had had enough. 

“Don’t touch me!” he hissed at the other man. He was shaking, cheeks red. How dare he. Confusion and hurt washed over Elias’ face and in that moment Peter hated him more than he had thought possible. He didn’t want to see his Elias’ face so pained. 

“Peter... Peter it’s me, it’s Elias...”, the other said, voice shaking. 

“I know who you are”, Peter simply stated. He was no fool. Was this part of the other Elias’s games? To hurt him even more. 

“No Peter. It’s me, Elias. The real one.” Scrap the earlier anger. How dare Elias try to say those words. He wanted to hit the man, holding himself back for simply not wanting to hit an injured man. Or his lover. 

“Stop it! I’m not here for you to torment me.” Peter’s voice was desperate, shaking from anger and grief. He noticed a tear fall down Elias’s cheek. He raised his eyes to meet the man’s eyes and almost choked. He usually avoided eye contact with Elias, he hated looking at those cold, violently green eyes. But these eyes, these weren’t green. No, they were glassy and tired, but unmistakably brown. Peter had to press his hand to his mouth. It took him a while to feel capable of speech again. 

“Is... is it actually Elias?” he whispered. Elias, who at this point, had full tear rivers running down his cheeks, nodded. Peter just cupped his face into his hands. He wanted to believe him, he really did. This didn’t feel like what Jonah would do. Peter allowed himself a moment of hope, that this moment, that everything was real. He believed it was once Elias took his hand and kissed him on it. He was more tender and sweet that Jonah could ever dream of being. 

Peter didn’t speak for the rest of the time, but he refused to leave Elias’s side. He had gotten him back, through all the odds, after all the years of withstanding Jonah’s abuse, he finally had Elias, his Elias, back, he wasn’t going to risk losing him again. He spent two days by Elias’s side, until he had recovered enough to be discharged home. Peter held on to Elias like his dear life the whole ride home. Neither one of them had really spoken anything since the first conversation, more than a few “I love yous” and “Is this actually real?”. 

Elias was mostly blind. Legally blind in the least. He said he saw shapes and colors, but blurry and without any ability to really tell what he was looking. Peter really didn’t care, his life was worth living again, he had his lovely husband back. Well, technically he had never been able to marry Elias. That needed fixing. 

It took a while for them to be able to live normally. They had both been so traumatized by Jonah. Peter never did find out how the Institute employees had gotten rid of Jonah, and without dying as well, but he didn’t really want to bother his head with that. Jon and Martin had come over to check on Elias, explained a few bits of what they had done and then left. 

Elias woke up every night screaming and crying. He hated the darkness, not being able to see. Sometimes, he told Peter, he felt like he had no control of himself again. That no matter how much he tried to move, all he could hear was Jonah laughing. Jonah was gone, though. It didn’t mean the trauma didn’t stick. Elias would forget to eat, stay awake for days and just spend hours absently staring at nothing. 

Peter, no matter how happy and overjoyed he was at getting the love of his life back, could not avoid flinching at times, when he looked at Elias. It wasn’t fair, Elias had never done anything, it had always been Jonah. But when someone who looks like the love of your life abuses you for years, it registers as them in your brain. These times he was glad Elias could not really see him. He could not have handled the look on Elias’s face when he realised, that Peter was expecting a hit or venomous words. He felt horrible knowing Elias had seen everything, heard every word both Jonah and Peter had exchanged. 

Little by little, they did get better. Elias had had longer hair before Jonah and after a few months, it was longer again, which did a lot more to ease the ever lingering fear of Jonah than Peter would ever care to admit. Elias's hair was long again and messy and his face was happy and kind, his eyes shining bright even still. All the cold cruelty of Jonah was slowly fading out, washing off of Elias. It was cleansing. He still had nightmares, Peter could tell from the way Elias clung onto him at night, which is when he would always wake him, kiss his tears and speak kind words to him until Elias would fall asleep again. 

They moved. Neither one of them wanted to live where Jonah had lived. Their new apartment was much better, by just the fact it was theirs, only theirs and they were safe there, near the ocean. Elias enjoyed sitting by the beaches just listening to the waves. 

Little by little they got settled into the calm domesticity. They had time to heal together and grow old. 

They still had time. They always would. They had each other.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for PTSD, mental breakdown, intrusive/obsessive thoughts/behavior

Peter was worried about Elias. 

Of course Elias knew that. He understood why. Peter had been helpful, barely leaving him, but he needed to feed and such and he felt comfortable enough to leave Elias alone for short periods. Unfortunately Elias did not deal well with being alone with his almost maddening thoughts, he could still hear Jonah’s voice and laughter in his head. 

Peter had somehow gotten a surgery to work that had helped with Elias’s sight. Of course the surgeon had been doing the work but Elias couldn’t shake the feeling Peter had gotten involved in it somehow. He wanted to just be free of the Entities, the last reminders of Jonah. Well not the last. Never the last. Elias could see maybe a feet in front of him. He had refused more, saying all he needed was to see Peter’s face and he was content. He never told Peter, that he was so tired of Seeing and did not want to risk attracting the attention of the Eye again. He did not want to see anything but Peter’s face. 

In the moments he was alone, or thought Peter didn’t notice, he would stare at himself in the mirror. He did not want to see himself. Even now, when he looked nothing like Jonah had styled Elias’s body, and he was careful to make sure they did not look the same. His hair was long and messy, he wore glasses and never wore suits or really any fancy clothes. He couldn’t stand the shadow of Jonah he got in those. Elias could still not shake the feeling he had been stuck on for years, watching himself through Jonah’s eyes. He looked in the mirror and Jonah stared back at him. Sometimes the mirror image was Jonah, with his bloody green eyes. 

So yeah, Elias could see why Peter worried watching his husband slowly lose his mind staring at himself in the mirror for possibly hours, just looking at his eyes unmoving, like doll. Elias knew he needed therapy, but how does one go about talking about any of that stuff he had had to endure, clunging to the useless hope one day he’d be free. 

He was staring again. Peter had gone to get them some takeout. Elias knew he needed his alone time, but he still hated being left alone with his thoughts, with the memory of Jonah. It was almost ritualistic now, borderline obsession. He had to stare at the mirror in their shared apartment and stare at his own eyes like any second they could turn so green it made him ill. If he didn’t blink, he would see it. At times he could sense the strangling feeling of being watched and it drove him nuts. The Eye should have the courtesy to leave him alone after letting its avatar torture him for years. 

He was holding scissors. He didn’t know how he had gotten his hands on them. He just held them and stared at his eyes. If he didn’t have eyes, Jonah would not return. He wouldn’t have to look at his own face again. He would lose Peter’s face though and he did not know if it was worth everything else. Peter was his anchor and not seeing him ever again felt more horrible than being locked up in your own head. And destroying his eyes felt disrespectful to whatever Peter had done to get them to work again. 

Elias hadn’t even heard Peter come back. He just suddenly realised he was staring at his husband through the mirror. His husband, who he could not see very well, but he could see the sad, pained expression on his face. Elias wanted to scream. Out of anger, frustration, fear or exhaustion, he could not tell. Peter’s warm hands brushed against Elias’s own and he felt the strong fingers remove the scissors from him. Shortly, without realising, what had happened, he was sitting on their living room couch. Peter sat next to him, waiting quietly. Why was he being so calm? It frustrated Elias. Jonah had hurt Peter so much in those years, and he still could not really look Elias in the eyes, which hurt more than he would have liked. He understood his husbands pain, he had been there for all of it. It had been such a struggle to watch Jonah torment his Peter, turn his hopes and dreams against him. 

Peter was still sitting, looking expectantly at Elias. Elias sighed. 

“Im sorry.” Elias didn’t know what else to say. 

“It’s alright”, Peter tried to say, which seemed to snap something in Elias’s head. 

“No it’s not! I cannot get rid of him! He is just there, in my head. I get no peace from him. I know you see him as well every time you look at me! And-”, at this point Elias was almost yelling. Peter reached his hand towards Elias, but he flinched away. 

“Please don’t. You haven’t done anything wrong, but I don’t think I could handle touch right now”, he stated calmer. Peter just nodded. 

“It’s not fair! It’s just not fair! I-… Jonah bloody Magnus stole big parts of my life, tortured me and the love of my life and now that he should be gone he is still there, mocking me from the mirror! Seeing things was so exhausting... Im just so, so tired, Peter. I know this isn’t fair on you either, to be forced to look after me after years of abuse by me and-”, Elias was just ranting, tears filling his eyes and falling down, the taste of salt filling his mind. Peter cut him off quickly. 

“No, not by you. By Jonah. I hoped I’d get you back, I spent all those years praying, that one day I might have the actual Elias back, nothing else mattered. I do admit, sometimes I feel like he is still here, but then I see you and you’re just everything he never was and I know it’s you. Your aura is so different from his, my dear. He is gone, and he will never come back. We need to get used to each other being here again.” 

Elias didn’t know what to say. Of course Jonah was gone, but he truly wasn’t, not then, if ever. He felt so lost and alone. He acted without thinking, crashed into Peter’s lap and sobbed. He could feel his husbands hands wrap around him and hold him tightly there. It was reassuring. Peter loved him, Elias knew that. Neither of them was too god with words, but that embrace seemed to fill a void inside Elias, it was something he hadn’t realised he had needed all this time. He suddenly felt warm and loved again. His head was cloudy and throbbing in pain. 

“I didn’t even get to attend my own wedding.” For some reason, that was the first coherent sentence he could muster up. Peter laughed quietly. 

“We can arrange a wedding to be held. A proper one this time. No body snatching, just us getting married.” Elias hadn’t actually considered that. It made so much sense, though. 

“I think I’d like that”, Elias laughed. Oh how lucky he was, to have someone like Peter by his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just like writing and this wouldn't leave me alone so. Elias is traumatized.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They get married in this

Elias was freaking out. Had he been this nervous the first time he was supposed to marry Peter? Peter was so perfect though, how could he not be nervous. Peter had aged like fine wine and Elias was halfway glad that Jonah had allowed him to see things, having to see Peter so hurt had been hell, but partly he had been allowed to grow old with the love of his life. It had been hell though. But now, he was allowed to be with his Peter. The priviledge of waking up next to Peter every morning and not having to worry about Jonah playing with Peter’s emotions. Waking up and having the right to just stare at him, appreciate every crease on his face and the way his face looked peaceful in the morning light, even though Peter’s relaxed face always had a hint of sadness in it. Elias was always overcome to kiss Peter’s face softly, which he would always do after he woke up, but while Peter was still sleeping, Elias enjoyed just watching him exist there, so close to him. He refused to let the thought at the back of his mind, that Jonah had liked watching people, ruin the little moments of happiness in his new existance. 

Eventually Peter would wake up. Sometimes he opened his eyes and saw Elias staring at him. It sometimes freaked him, for a second Peter couldn’t think of anything but that Jonah was back, stalking him and about to mock him and it woke deep terror within Peter, but then he of course noticed the kindness and worry and guilt in Elias’s face and guilt was not something Jonah had ever shown ability to feel. Elias would always approach Peter carefully those mornings and hold him for a long while, and they would just exist together, warm against each other and drink in the comforting presence of each other. 

Those morning were a lot rarer nowadays though. Most of the time Peter would wake up and softly laugh, a sound Elias treasured in his heart and made his stomach flutter every time he heard it, and say something to the effect of “You’re staring”, which is when Elias would also laugh and then he would kiss Peter softly and laugh into his skin. Small moments like these were reasons they had the strength to tredge through the trauma and pain, the moments like this, where things were almost back to the way they had been years ago. 

Technically they were already married, but this was Elias’s first wedding as himself. He knew he was nervous of stupid things. Like the wedding decorations. Or the weather during their wedding. Or if Peter even loved him anymore and was doing this just because he was expected to. Or what if the rings didnt fit. 

That was stupid, he told himself. The wedding decorations were in the hands of the wedding company. And it was an inside wedding, the weather didn’t matter. They had been literally wearing the rings for years, of course they fit. And Peter... he didn’t want to doubt him. And he knew trying to recover from Jonah was hard on Peter, never speaking about not having been able to properly feed in months or be properly alone because of his half-blind husband, they had things to discuss through, but Elias tried to push the thought of Peter not loving him anymore out of his head, because he could not live without Peter. 

He had dreaded wearing a suit to his wedding, because that was just what Jonah had typically worn and it would be his first time wearing Jonah- typical clothes, but the suit they had bought him was so unlike anything Jonah would ever wear. It was beautiful deep purple with embrioided flowers and it made Elias feel extremely handsome and most importantly it did not remind him about Jonah, when he stared at himself in the mirror. He liked the way he looked in the mirror. 

Elias was sitting in the dressing room. They had agreed that he walk down the aisle to Peter, as they had agreed years before, before Jonah had bastardized everything they loved. 

“Calm down, calm down, calm down, calm. Calm,” Elias muttered to himself, shaking his hands as he paced back and forth giving the clock quick glances. He was ready. He still had half an hour to kill before the best moment of his life. Half an hour for him to wait. Half an hour for Jonah to appear and rip this day from him again. 

“You’re being stupid and paranoid, Elias. He is gone.” Elias tried to laugh it off. Of course Jonah was gone and never coming back. He looked at the mirror and made a nervous laughing sound, which sounded a bit too much like wincing to be convincing. Who was he trying to convince being alone in the room. Himself? Probably. 

“Jonah is gone,” he said to the mirror and managed to stop his voice from shaking. Mostly. 

“Am I though?” The sound of that made Elias flinch. It was Jonah. His eyes darted around the room looking for... Elias didn’t know if he was looking for Jonah or an escape. The room however, was just as empty as before. Nothing showed any signs of moving or hiding Jonah’s presence behind it. It was probably just his imagination, but paralyzing fear had found its place in his stomach and Elias wanted to run. He was fast and could take off and run off somewhere where Jonah could never get to him. He wouldn’t be safe with Peter, Jonah would always expect him to be together with him. His panicked eyes looked around the room and stared at the clock again. How long had he been just standing, fear filling his every sense? 

The clock showed, that his time to walk the aisle was in five minutes. He needed to make his decision. He could hear Jonah laughing, in his head. He wanted to yell, to scream, to claw into his head and rip Jonah out of there. Elias’s eyes glanced at the mirror and he froze. Elias stared straight at Jonah. The short, slick, styled hair, the fancy expensive suit that wasn’t what he was wearing, that cruel, smug grin on Jonah’s face. It was like looking in the mirror back when Jonah had had all the control. Elias blinked. Jonah was gone. 

“Right... It’s all in your head, Elias, it has to be. You need to calm down”, Elias whispered shaking, forcing himself to not look at the mirror. He waited the last minutes scared, but nothing really happened. His clue was sounded, so he took a deep breath and prepared himself for the wedding. 

His worries all disappeared as he walked onto the aisle and saw Peter. He didn’t notice the guests, admittably there wasn’t many and most of them were Peter’s crewmates. Elias had sent an invitation to Jon, who had shown up with Martin. But none of them really mattered, because Peter was walking towards him. Elias almost forgot how to breathe. Peter looked so absolutely lovely and was practically glowing. Elias didn’t even notice how his steps got faster until he was holding onto Peter’s hand with his shaking hands. One person shouldn’t be allowed to be so full of happiness. Why had he even ever considered leaving? That felt such a silly thing from far behind. 

Elias was so happy he did not really notice walking the rest of the aisle. He listened intently to every word of Peter’s vow, but could not later recall a single word of his own vow. The moments before the priest’s “You may kiss the groom” was excruciating, he just wanted to kiss his husband. Once the words had been said, Elias reached out to Peter and carefully pulled him into a kiss. Some things in life were worth the wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to have more angst with Jonah, but I didn't want to write it.

**Author's Note:**

> I blame my friend and certain Tiktok creators for this little brainchild.


End file.
